


Train That Will Take You

by bold_seer



Category: Ticket to Ride (Board Game)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Trains, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:09:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27878137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: You sat yourself down with your hopes andhoped.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Train That Will Take You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psocoptera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/gifts).



> _what is it like to live and travel in the world of the game_

‘You’, a passenger and keen observer.

in your compartment:

The young woman, a passenger with some doubts.

The woman in purple, a _laissez-faire_ passenger.

The old man, a nostalgic passenger.

****

The train had stopped. You had made it to Phoenix (from Santa Fe) and to El Paso (from Phoenix). It seemed the longer route, two thirds of a triangle, but you didn’t mind. Time passed in a different manner when you were travelling. On the tracks, it slowed down, then sped up, going faster and faster, in an invisible sort of way, until you were at your destination - quite suddenly. Except you’d had a feeling.

There were things you knew about, and things you didn’t, but predicting delays was something you had knack for. You’d boarded anyway, to see how far you could go. Hoping it wouldn’t be like the time you ended up in Salt Lake City instead of Sault Ste. Marie. They were far apart, even the conductor admitted it. You hadn’t wanted to go to Utah at all, but someone had misunderstood the route spectacularly, and there you were. In Utah. It was the first thing you ever learnt: you never knew where you’d get when you got on a train. You sat yourself down with your hopes and _hoped_. But you never knew what was coming, not with the ticket and not with the ride.

The young woman had put her paper aside, left it open. You glanced at the sheet, in that covert way of reading something, not too obviously.  


_We have all heard these points before. That travelling should take time. That we are privileged to live in this age, in which railroads allow us to reach places we otherwise could not. And most of all: that waiting is reasonable. But dear reader, is it truly? For I propose - and this is a radical notion, which will take some time to fully comprehend - that OUR time matters. That we are, in fact, horribly inconvenienced by these roundabout journeys. If I have business in Montreal, and live in New York, should that take me to Washington and Chicago first? Is that a more scenic route? Is it more pleasant to travel in the opposite direction, before heading north, so that one feels immense relief when the train finally moves the right way? I could tell you about more baffling delays I’ve experienced, convoluted routes and strange turns, but they are pertinent only because they have led me to the following conclusion. It is not merely our right, but our DUTY. We must demand change._

She was a rebel then, leaning that way. You wouldn’t have guessed it from the looks of her, the frilly white collar and the navy skirt. People resembled railway journeys, both straightforward and surprising.

“Two trains aren’t able to pass each other,” the young woman pointed out. “As though it isn’t safe. If there are four competing trains, the rules change.”

Of course, it was never about safety, but necessity. That was the game, those were the rules.

“My life is mine, to live as I choose,” she continued. “Yet I’m not in control of the destination. The train is moving in one direction, but then it stops, turns another way.”

“Honey,” said the woman in purple. It was a striking outfit, against her red hair and green eyes, fit for a striking person. “Might you be on the wrong train.” Her words were drawn out, teasing, as though she meant the wrong train might also be the _right_ train.

“Which train are _you_ on?” The young woman’s inflection betrayed some interest, equal awe and accusation.

The woman in purple smiled, amused and inviting. “I’m here for the ride.”

“There was a saying in my youth.” The old man was looking at his fellow passengers through his pince-nez. His tone was soothing and pleasant to listen to, less an interruption than an intermission. “If you don’t like tracks, don’t get on a train.”

For the old man, it was a way of life. He’d been on trains half his years, perhaps literally. Trains were even slower in the past, when they were still building the railways, and the trains followed those unfinished tracks. He could remember choosing his first ticket. He didn’t want to give it up, that sense of wonder and adventure he’d once had, and still did. That was _time_. You could make this journey a hundred times, pick the same stops, but _this_ journey was unique. Every journey somehow was.

“Think of it this way,” said the woman in purple, her demeanour confident and inviting. That of a seasoned traveller, another kind. She spoke to the young woman, but she spoke to the old man, and she spoke to you. “Sometimes you’re travelling one way, but something happens, and it doesn’t work out. Doesn’t make it good or bad, only unexpected, and then you can’t move forward immediately. You have to change: directions, plans, routes. So, you get there another way. Or you don’t. The side trip becomes the new journey. And the other way - well, you never know, do you?”

That was life, tracks leading in different directions. You could travel many ways, not all at the same time.

“‘The Railroad Not Taken’,” the old man added. “Two tracks diverged…” His voice trailed away.

“I’m sorry,” said the young woman. “But I don’t understand. Why can’t we follow a schedule or guide? They aren’t navigating a ship through unknown waters. The tracks are already there!”

“You could say we ran out of steam.” The woman in purple seemed delighted by the turn of events. “We’re missing a car.”

It wasn’t a car, a carriage, not really: it was a card. The image of a carriage on a card, the difference that made.

“They need a ‘caboose’ -” That was a new word. Did it have something to do with railways, as well? It appeared suddenly, like an animal, a caribou or a moose, but you weren’t an expert on North American wildlife. Trains didn’t venture that far into the woods, usually. “Before they complete the route.” The old man sounded wistful, as if he was used to this, but also as if he wanted to savour the moment in time. This. Holding on to it, as to a precious memory, cataloguing it in his mind, as he had countless railway journeys and stops before.

“How can we not have enough cars to move?” It made no sense. “How did we _get_ here?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly possible.” The woman in purple was watching the young woman, an indulgent expression on her face. “Miscounting cards, misreading directions, misusing trains. It can get you into all sorts of trouble, or be a lot of fun. You ever play poker?” The young woman hadn’t. “Luck is always involved in card games. It’ll take a while.”

You had stayed silent, and looked out the window, wondering if anything here was different from Utah. Life or trains. Life on a train.

After some time, the woman in purple said, “See, now we’re moving again.” You felt the slight shift. The connectedness and triumph, of friends and strangers, who were on a train, united by at least one common goal: the desire to travel. Someone had picked the card they needed, and they were going to make the journey. And so were you.

Yet you felt certain that there weren’t only _two_ categories, those who were going places, and those who weren’t. Or those who remembered the past, and those who looked to the future - and those in the present?

Instead, all across the country, in other countries or places you’d never visited, there were trains and carriages and passengers - people who thought they were lost, and people who thought they weren’t. Perhaps there were as many perspectives as there were _people_. This was your journey, or you were there, on a train that was moving. You were moving, too. Going forward.


End file.
